Terri Schiavo attorney cites SBC resolution in legal motion

CLEARWATER (FBW)-Citing Terri Schiavo’s right to freely exercise her religious faith, her parents’ lawyer July 20 added a new twist to the case by arguing that removing the 40-year-old disabled woman’s feeding tube would be in direct violation of her religious beliefs.

Drawing on a March 20, 2004, speech by Pope John Paul II, the leader of Roman Catholics worldwide, the motion argues that Terri would “not want to commit a sin of the gravest proportions by foregoing treatment to effect her own death in defiance of her religious faith’s express and recent instruction to the contrary.”

The motion, filed by attorney Pat Anderson, also referred to a resolution on euthanasia passed by messengers to the 1992 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Indianapolis.

Terri Schiavo collapsed under mysterious circumstances in 1991. Since then some doctors have said she is in a “persistent vegetative state.”

Terri’s parents, Bob and Mary Schindler disagree with that diagnosis and have said she has never received the rehabilitation doctors recommended.

Michael Schiavo, Terri’s estranged husband and legal guardian, has tried for nearly a decade to have her feeding tube removed so she can “die with dignity.” He has insisted she would not want to be kept alive, although her priest and her parents have said she would not wish to be euthanized.

The motion asked the Sixth Judicial Circuit Court to reconsider its October 21, 2003, order authorizing Michael Schiavo to sue Governor Jeb Bush for authorizing “Terri’s Law,” which provided re-insertion of a nutrition and hydration tube previously ordered removed by the court at the wishes of Michael Schiavo. The case is before the Florida Supreme Court where oral arguments are scheduled to be heard August 31.

In the Pope’s speech to an international congress in March, he said, in part: “I should like particularly to underline how the administration of water and food, even when provided by artifical means, always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act.”

The 1992 SBC resolution used as Exhibit B also stated opposition to “efforts to designate food and water as ‘extraordinary treatment,’ and urge that nutrition and hydration continue to be viewed as compassionate and ordinary medical care and humane treatment.”

Decrying the use of the term “vegetable” on a human being, the Pope said also, in his speech, that “a man, even if seriously ill or disabled in the exercise of his highest functions, is and always will be a man, and he will never become a ‘vegetable’ or an ‘animal.’”

Pat Anderson, attorney for the Schindlers, contended in the motion that “great deference” had been paid to the notion that Terri would wish to die if incapacitated. Even if that were the case, Anderson wrote that the Pope’s clarification on the issue would have given Terri clear instruction on how things should proceed.

George Felos, attorney for Michael Schiavo, told reporters July 20 that the papal argument is “legally preposterous.”

“Terri Schiavo has had no cognition, no thought...for 14 years,” Felos said, according to the Tampa Tribune.

Affadavits filed with the motion include testimony by both of Terri’s parents and a family friend Frances L. Casler that describes Terri as a “practicing Catholic” who attended Catholic school from elementary through high school, went to mass nearly every week, and was taught to “respect the Pope and the teachings of the church.”

Mary Schindler said in the affadavit that Michael Schiavo, who is not Catholic, and Terri were married in the Catholic church after Michael was given a special dispensation to marry Terri after the couple received prenuptial counseling.

“Terri was a gentle spirit, but firm in her Catholic faith,” Mary Schindler said. “There is no question in my mind that Terri had not fallen away from her faith at the time of her collapse.”

Bob Schindler said in his affadavit that although Terri attended church regularly and even made a special gesture of dedication during the celebration of their nupital mass, Michael Schiavo made “derogatory or condescending comments” about Terri’s devotion.

In a November, 2003 interview with Florida Baptist Witness (online at www.FloridaBaptistWitness.com) Bob Schindler told a similiar story about Terri’s husband.

“Michael used to laugh when Terri went to mass with us,” Bob told the Witness. “He would say, ‘say some prayers for me.’”

In their affadavits, the Schindlers Terri attended mass with them in St. Petersburg on Saturday afternoons before her collapse, although she apparently did not involve her husband who worked as a night manager in a restaurant.

“I cannot imagine that Terri would go against the Pope on this issue,” Mary Schindler said. “Removing her feeding tube without any consideration for her religious beliefs is, in my opinion, grossly improper and is a denial of her religious liberty and her right to freely practice her religious beliefs.”

In an interview with the Witness, Anderson said that the “engine” driving Michael Schiavo’s case thus far has been his testimony that she was not a regular churchgoer and that she would have wanted to die.

“No matter what Terri wanted before, in order to continue the fiction that she wants to die, you have to find that she wants to defy the Word of God, to be disobedient to God, to abandon her religious faith and to directly defy the dictates of her chosen faith,” Anderson said.

Anderson said whether one thinks that Terri is spiritually aware or can think, she should not be “put to death” in violation of her religious faith.

“If you can’t make a Muslim prisoner eat pork and beans, I don’t see how you can kill this young woman in violation of her Catholic teachings,” Anderson said.

Crediting Southern Baptists with foresight for drawing public attention to the issue of euthanasia as early as 1992, Anderson said she believes Southern Baptists anticipated the problem and acted quickly.

“The Catholic church has gotten all the press for being anti-euthanasia and pro-life,” said Anderson, “but in fact the Southern Baptists certainly have a longer history of being explicitly anti-euthanasia by starvation and dehydration than the Catholic church does.

“It’s the Baptists who are out there kind of leading the calvary charge,” Anderson said.

For more information, see “Terri Schiavo: A Life at Stake” in the Witness’ Special Reports section at www.FloridaBaptistWitness.com.